David Bajo

David Bajo’s debut novel, The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri, was published in 2008 in the US and will appear in ten other countries in 2009. The Los Angeles Times says  “Bajo uses words and equations to the point of poetry, particularly when he evokes the world created by Cervantes.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune says of Irma Arcuri: “The book invokes the metaphysical spirit of authors Bajo clearly admires -- Borges, Kundera, Cervantes, to name a few -- and it's loaded with intertextual high jinks, doppelgangers, artistic and carnal seduction and elegant mathematical equations. Think of it as Eastern European beach reading: a sexy book that's about everything, yet above all about the act (Act? Art!) of reading itself.” And The Providence Journal describes his work  as “mystical, sensual and finally haunting . . . demanding a second reading, an intimate de-coding, a search for revelations, epiphanies, secrets, a sorcerer’s stone.” Bajo is an assistant professor of creative writing at The University of South Carolina. He has published several short stories and has also worked as a journalist and translator.

Louise Glück

Photo by Sigrid Estrada

Tuesday, November 18, 2008, Law School Auditorium 6:00 pm

Louise Glück is the author of numerous books of poetry, including The Seven Ages (Ecco Press, 2001); Vita Nova (1999), winner of The New Yorker Magazine’s Book Award in Poetry; Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award; Ararat (1990), for which she received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; and The Triumph of Achilles (1985), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Boston Globe Literary Press Award, and the Poetry Society of America's Melville Kane Award. She has also published a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. A chapbook, October, was published by Saraband Books in 2003.  Glück’s tenth book of poetry is Averno (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), which was nominated for the National Book Award in 2006 and was listed by The New York Times Book Review as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year.  Her honors also include the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, Sara Teasdale Memorial Prize (Wellesley, 1986), M.I.T. Anniversary Medal (2000), the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award (2007), and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

David Baldacci

David Baldacci currently lives in Virginia, where he was born in 1960. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Virginia Commonwealth University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. He later practiced law for nine years in Washington, DC, as both a trial and corporate attorney.  He has published thirteen novels: The Camel Club; Absolute Power; Total Control; The Winner; The Simple Truth; Saving Faith; Wish You Well; Last Man Standing; The Christmas Train; Split Second; Hour Game;  The Collectors . His debut novel in his young adult series, Freddy and the French Fries: Fries Alive!  He has also published a novella  entitled Office Hours for Holland's Year 2000 "Month of the Thriller." Baldacci authored a short story, "The Mighty Johns," as part of a mystery anthology published in 2002. His works have been in numerous magazines, newspapers, journals, and publications worldwide.